Page 23

It was difficult not to resent Order for how she’d treated us.

One of her own was wreaking havoc in the Earthly Dimension, and the queen of Purgatory couldn’t even be bothered to tell us that she didn’t have the power needed to stop Hrista. That we’d have to bring the rogue Valkyrie back here for Order to be able to do something about that raving lunatic.

Astra and Brandon led the group, while Hammer padded quietly beside the Berserker. Astra was still reeling from the discovery of Brandon’s past, but I had a feeling they would overcome it. History shaped us, but we couldn’t allow it to define us. That was what my father had taught me, and it was what I believed, as well. Astra looked at Brandon whenever his sights were set on something else. As soon as she glanced elsewhere, Brandon’s eyes would find her. It was rather endearing to see them orbiting closer to one another, determined to move past the adversity.

The same could be said about Myst and Thayen, too. Maybe they thought we couldn’t see them, but Jericho and I had already placed a bet on how long it would be before they kissed. I gave them a couple of days, considering the silent hunger in Thayen’s gaze whenever it settled on the Valkyrie. Jericho insisted it would take them at least a week. He knew the vampire well enough. “Trust me, he’s hilariously shy when it comes to women,” Jericho had whispered earlier, making me chuckle since the fae dragon was famed for being the exact opposite.

“Are you sure we’re going in the right direction?” I asked Brandon.

Edda, who walked with Myst and Thayen right behind the Berserker, glanced at me over her shoulder. “He can feel Baldur. The closer he gets, the stronger the Father’s presence. The true and final cut-off from Purgatory will happens when Brandon leaves. Until then, he’s still sensitive to his kind.”

“Relax, Dafne. I’m sure Brandon has the decency to stop and ask for directions, if needed,” Jericho cut in, and it took a considerable amount of effort not to laugh. He’d been cracking jokes since we’d left the White Hall of Judgment, and I knew he was doing this because of how enraging and demoralizing that entire encounter had been.

“And how might Baldur help, precisely?” the Time Master asked. He and Aphis were watching our backs, yet I still couldn’t shake the shivers tumbling down my spine. Everything about this place was wrong and mismatched, yet it was breathtakingly beautiful at the same time. It was hard to reconcile such aspects, especially when there were bigger things to worry about. “You said you might know a way to bring Hrista back, Edda, but you have yet to offer details.”

The Mother of Valkyries didn’t look at us, though I was willing to bet she was smiling. She was a wonder to behold, even from behind. I hadn’t given it much thought during Order’s trials, but we had some time to breathe and wrap our heads around certain things, and I could truly take Edda in. She was tall and imposing. That stuck with me the most. In that sense, she reminded me of my mother. It had taken the fiercest of women to tame my father’s icy heart.

“As you know, the second most powerful beings in Purgatory after Order herself are the Mother of Valkyries—that is, yours truly—and the Father of Berserkers, Baldur,” Edda said. “I am hoping that I can get Baldur involved in a recovery mission. I can join you on my own, but I would feel more comfortable with him by my side, as we complement each other.”

“Light and darkness,” Myst replied. “We may be separate forces, but if we were to combine…”

“Hrista did something similar to herself,” Astra said, frowning. “She can control both light and darkness.”

Edda sighed. “No one saw that coming, and yes, it’s a problem. Which is why I’m counting on Baldur to help us. We don’t know what tricks Hrista might have up her sleeve. From what you’ve told us, she’s using death magic, too, and outside Purgatory none of us are as powerful. Perhaps Hrista is a troubling exception for her to do what she has done. Or perhaps she used death magic as an auxiliary power, I’m not sure… but what I am sure of is that we are stronger together. And bringing Hrista back here will not be easy.”

“Baldur won’t be easy to convince,” Brandon warned. “Wait until he hears I was banished.”

“What is he like?” Astra asked. It prompted the Berserker to hold back a hefty chuckle, but it wasn’t amusement I sensed in his tone. It was dread.

“You’ll meet him soon enough.”

Around us, the landscape had changed considerably. The copper hills were gone, and the land depressed into a deep valley with reddish tall grass and bountiful orchards with the strangest fruits hanging low from slender branches. The air was dry, smelling sweet—it reminded me of a freshly cut, deliciously ripe peach. “What is this place?” I wondered aloud, mesmerized by the peculiar trees.

Their trunks were perfectly straight and slim, much like aspens. Hundreds of branches shot out from near the ground level and all the way up to the top, about thirty feet high. The leaves were heart-shaped and crimson red, while the fruits were about the size of my fist and covered in a white, snakelike skin. The striking contrast of white and red beneath the diamond sky took my words away.

“Given that we’re basically spirits, we do not require food or drink. However, Purgatory does have tastes for us to enjoy,” Myst said. “We can still eat. We can still enjoy the cool freshness of a stream.” She nodded at the orchard. “Or the sweetness of a white-snake fruit.”

I plucked what Myst had referred to as a white-snake fruit from the tree closest to me and turned it over a couple of times. “And this? Is it edible?”

“Yes. Though we’ve never had living creatures here to taste them,” Edda replied. “The spirits like this stuff, but their experience with them is infinitely more intense than ours.”

“Or maybe we’re just used to the taste,” Brandon suggested with a shrug.

Either way, it was a green light to sink my teeth into the white skin. “Ow…” My teeth hurt. “This is hard. Literally hard. Like a rock. What the hell?”

“Here, like this,” Myst giggled and took the white snakeskin fruit from my hands. She smashed it against the tree trunk, and revealed the crimson, juicy pulp. I got half, and Jericho got the other half. For Astra, Brandon plucked a second fruit, inviting Thayen to taste, as well.

“I’m not designed to digest food,” the young vampire said.

“This isn’t physical food. Everything you see here is pure energy, Thayen,” Myst replied. “What you drink and eat here is literally soul food, a wonderful impression, but not something that affects your digestive system.”

Convinced by her argument, Thayen welcomed a proper tasting. The fruit was incredible. The pulp was fleshy and rich in water, yet sweet and intense with a sour twist on the tip of the tongue. It was an exploration of flavors, I thought, trying to associate with other fruits I had eaten over the years, both common and rare from different realms of GASP. None came to mind. This was entirely different.

“I feel kind of funny,” Jericho muttered, a smile stretching across his lips.

It didn’t take long for me to mirror his state. The giggle came over me and wouldn’t stop. Brandon, Myst, and Edda were still, watching the rest of us with broad grins as we laughed and laughed and laughed to the point where our abs were aching from the repeated contractions.

“Is this supposed to happen?” I heard myself ask, though my voice sounded really far away. My legs felt soft and mushy, like overboiled spaghetti, and I wrapped my arms around Jericho’s neck to stop myself from sinking onto the ground, shapeless and delighted.

“We have no idea,” Edda replied. “Like we said, there were never living creatures here to taste the white fruit of mirth.”

“The white fruit of mirth? Mirth?!” Astra croaked, lying on the ground on her side, laughing so hard that tears ran down her cheeks. Brandon was right there with her, smiling and holding her in his arms. She pulled herself away and rolled over, her skin glowing pink as she made the most of this sensation.

“This is incredible,” Thayen observed, though he was mere inches away from losing it. He kept staring at his hands, turning them over, as though wondering if they were really his or not. The air felt thicker and heavier, or maybe it was just my impression.

“Are you okay?” Jericho’s voice made me look up. I was hanging from him like a vine of leafy ivy, subject to the wind and every other force that could impact me, and the fae dragon was laughing, his arms tightening around my waist.

I sighed deeply and managed to find the ground again, the soles of my feet tingling as I pushed myself up on my toes to kiss him. Our lips met, and the entire world disappeared. It didn’t matter that people could see us. It didn’t matter that we were under the eyes of friends and strangers alike, nor that we’d been bewitched by whatever energies emanated from the white fruit.

Nothing mattered, because in the madness of this moment, in the sweet folly of our disrupted existence, in the heart of the nightmare that had unexpectedly thrown us out of our own homes, Jericho and I had found our way to each other. He’d tugged, I’d pulled, he’d poked, I’d prodded, and finally… we were inching closer and closer. His lips were dangerously addictive. His smile a joy to behold. His strength reassuring. His fire… oh, so exciting.

I had never allowed myself to feel this way for anyone—though I wasn’t sure I could actually control such emotions. I’d deluded myself into thinking I could. Well, that lost its virtue, too. It was devoid of meaning, for only one thing had emerged from this storm—the certainty of how Jericho felt about me, and the speed with which I was falling for him.

“You taste like summer,” I whispered against his lips.

“And you taste like heaven,” Jericho replied. We giggled and bathed in the pure light of diamonds in the sky, hugging and kissing, welcoming the sweet joy of this moment and hoping that it might last forever.

I heard Astra sigh somewhere close by, but I couldn’t be bothered to peel myself off Jericho. It felt too good. “I wish we could stay here forever,” she said.

“We could, if you wanted to,” Brandon replied, his voice soft. Oh, the Berserker was head over heels with our glowing girl, and he’d recently become a free agent, too. I wondered what it would be like for the two of them to be together.

The Time Master’s voice cut through the veil of wondrous sensations with a hearty dose of unforgiving reality. “You were banished from Purgatory,” he reminded Brandon. “And one of your sisters went AWOL and uber-crazy in the realm of the living. We’re wasting precious seconds here.”

“You keep forgetting… there are no seconds here,” Brandon shot back.

My eyes opened slowly, finding Jericho’s fixed on me. Hues of deep blue danced in the turquoise pools framed with jet black lashes. “That’s right, there is no time,” I murmured, as if waking from a dream.

“But it’s all still real,” Jericho replied, dropping a kiss on the tip of my nose. “Time is right… We have to keep moving.”

I blinked several times just to get the rest of this world back into focus. And just like that, the fun fizzled out, and only the truth remained. We were in Purgatory. We were headed to summon Baldur, Father of Berserkers. And Hrista had stolen our island, among other horrendous things.

“Way to spoil the moment,” I muttered, looking at the Time Master, and for the first time since I’d met him, I noticed his ghoul, Aphis, smiling. That was a rare sight.

“Wait, you said earlier that you experience your past and your presence at once,” Astra blurted and sprang to her feet while Brandon scrambled to get back up, confused by the sudden change in tone. “How is it, then, that you cannot remember your history as a living creature?”

“None of us remember much from our lives,” the Berserker replied. He looked to Edda and Myst for backup. “Tell her. Please.”

Astra followed his gaze, and Myst was compelled to oblige. “When we are reaped, we leave our mortal lives behind. The memories begin to fade, ever so slowly. Those who move on get to keep it, but Valkyries and Berserkers, we… we lose it all, eventually. And yes, we experience time differently, that is true. But the memory of life still fades. I believe Brandon when he says he can barely remember, because I can say the same about myself.”

“Well, you still have a notion of who you were,” Edda said.

“Right. But that is more or less it.”

Brandon lowered his gaze. “In my case, it might also be a case of choosing to forget and not wanting the past life to spoil this one. Especially now.”

“Come on,” Thayen said, breaking the conversation altogether. “Time may not flow the same way here, and the white fruit may be deceptively sweet and wonderful, but we still have work to do. It’s been a weird day so far, and something tells me it’s about to get weirder.”

None of us could object. One by one, we pulled ourselves together and went back to the main trail that crossed this deep valley. Thayen, Edda and Myst stayed close to Brandon and Astra, while Hammer led the way. Jericho, Time, Aphis, and I were last, often looking back to make sure we wouldn’t get any unpleasant surprises. This wasn’t a good place, and it wasn’t a bad place, either, so we didn’t know what to expect.

Jericho took my hand in his and gave me a smoldering, dark look. We’d had our fun. And I promised myself that I would do everything in my power to make sure we’d have more fun back home in The Shade, once we’d destroyed Hrista and pulverized the clones. My priorities were shifting, some flocking around Jericho. I didn’t mind. I liked the idea of a future with him in it.

My ice was rock solid, but I welcomed his fire with arms wide open. We’d need every ounce of strength against this new enemy.